April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Environment

Storm pics

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So yesterday July 19 marks year 27 of married life.

also huge storm.

There was either a mini tornado or a downburst and there is so much damage. We ran into the building hall at one point it seemed like all the windows were going to blow in. Windows were slightly opened and by them water was a couple of inches deep in the house.

We were doing fine for power until around 4 this morning 6:30 now still no power. Have been emergency vehicles around diverting traffic all night. There was a fire from a lighting strike about 1/2 a block away.

The pics aren’t that great and don\t really show the extent of the damage.

Climate Change Threatens Amazon

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While some debate if it even exists the devastating effects of climate change are plainly seen;

Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.

The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world’s atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.

“Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world’s largest forest,” said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.

“We can’t just wait and see because there is no going back,” he said. “We won’t know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late.”

from the Guardian

Beavers Fight Climate Change

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Finally getting the recognition they deserve Beavers have been shown to have a beneficial effect on the environment, says a study published in the Oct. issue of Western North American Naturalist. Long maligned for their damming ways, those dams have been found to provide habitat for song birds.

“We found that increasing density of beaver dams was associated with a diverse and abundant bird community and the wetland and streamside habitat these species depend on,” said Hilary Cooke, the study’s lead author who is now finishing her dissertation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “This habitat is critical to birds in semi-arid regions yet has been severely degraded or lost through much of the West. Our results suggest that management of beavers may be an important tool for restoring habitat and reversing bird declines.”

Beavers may also help as global warming depletes water tables;

“Beaver are an essential ecosystem engineer,” said co-author Steve Zack of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Beavers help repair degraded stream habitats and their dams and associated ponds recharge local water tables and create wetlands. With our changing climate likely to mean increasing droughts in the West, managing ways to allow watersheds to act more like sponges will be a challenge.

Beaver are a powerful tool to be considered for that, and the associated benefits to other wildlife add to their value.

Renew your love for the Beaver!

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